The Kernel of Education

Today for a change I'm going to blog about a contemporary issue. I usually shun these topics because most of the time enough has already been said about them. I have nothing novel to contribute. Furthermore, I know exactly what my point of view is and I'm not interested to convince others about it. I blog for my own benefit. 

What's the topic for today? Education in general and our Malaysian education system in particular. I read frequently about how bad our education system is. It is 'broken'; it is 'politicised'; 'we are far behind our neighbours'--these are common refrains. How true is that?

Now, I am a product of the Malaysian education system. 100%, from kindergarten to university. I am a pure product of the public school system. My primary and secondary education were completely in Bahasa Malaysia. Even in university, they tried their best to conduct all the courses in BM. Some courses accomplished that better than others. I remember my 3 years of mathematics of my engineering degree course were taught completely in BM.  

Of course, textbooks in BM at the tertiary level were non-existent. We had to read all our reference books in English but answer exam questions in BM. We were given some leeway for some courses that were only taught partially in BM: we were required to 'answer at least two questions in Bahasa Malaysia'!

I remember my first year Computers 101 course was also completely in BM. I could still remember some of the terms used: the mouse is tetikus; peripherals are called peranti susur-keliling; the UNIX shell, kerang and my personal favourite: nyahpepijat. (which never fail to put my younger colleagues now in stitches). If you can't figure that one out, here's a clue: nyah is a negative prefix often used to replace the prefix 'dis' in English. e.g. discharge is nyahcas. Anyone who has written some computer code would have done nyahpepijat before.

Throughout my entire primary and secondary school years I had no problems learning mathematics and science in BM. That was because they had proper BM equivalents for all the scientific terms. Mass is jisim; velocity, halaju; volume, isipadu; gradient, kecerunan; compound, sebatian; catalyst, mangkin; integration, pengkamilan; arithmetic progression, janjang kira-kira. 

Of course I didn't know the English equivalents then.  I only became acquainted with them when I reached university and found that all the textbooks were in English. But it was not a big deal, because there's always a one-to-one mapping between these scientific terms. 

Now, comes the hotly debated issue: should Maths and Science be taught in English? 

As someone who had the bulk of his maths and science education in Bahasa, my answer is: ideally, yes but not necessarily. Did I face any difficulties when I had to refer to books and technical papers written in English in university? Well, there were slight adjustments required but by and large, all my peers had no issues.  Having the subject taught in BM did not in any way make us less competent in the subject. We all went out into the world to become competent technical professionals serving global multi-nationals, communicating primarily in English.

Would it had been better if we had been taught in English instead? Yes, it certainly would have helped but not by a huge degree. We all had some basic education in English. We could navigate ourselves through textbooks and papers in English, even though the technical terms are different. That's not the main issue, as most of the BM terms were derivations from their English ones anyway (logarithms, logaritma, entropy, entropi).  

The main issue that needs to be addressed in our schools is the poor standard of English. This cannot be addressed simply by teaching Maths and Science in English.  The only real solution is a radical one:  use English as the main medium of communication in all our schools.  Even during my time, the standard of English among all my peers who went through the public school had dropped considerably after the mandatory change of medium to BM, especially in small towns and kampungs. 

Of course, we all know that using English as the main medium for teaching is a non-starter in our present political climate.  What then is the solution?  You know what? I think the teaching of languages in general has to be improved.  I even think our mastery of Bahasa Malaysia is bad. How many people read books BM?  

It actually doesn't matter what language is the medium of instruction. We need to inculcate a love for the humanities--literature, history and philosophy with an emphasis on reading and writing. We should strive to be multilingual, just like how we play different sports in school. We can be very good in one, but we should appreciate and know the rules of the others and be able to play them, if need to.

Am I being too idealistic? Most certainly.  I am advocating a re-emphasis on an education in liberal arts.  That would be the ultimate goal. It means a complete relook on what education is: not to produce a workforce, but to produce quality open-minded, thinking individuals.  That to me, is the real purpose of education. 

A liberal arts education is the foundation of an educated person. Learn the basics of being a well-balanced, decent human being in school. That forms the kernel of one's education. The rest are applications that can be learned from YouTube.

Insight-Seeing

What a busy long weekend it has been for me. I had earlier planned to write my weekly blogpost on Friday when I was on leave but other urgent matters overtook me and I had to attend to them first. Thankfully all that is settled now, and finally I have a chance to reflect on things.

Last week, I talked about attention as being key. When we pay attention, we are minimising noise and ensuring the quality of input data. The neural network of the mind does the rest. It sounds pretty simple. What I've not mentioned as a corollary of that principle is that, we are also being non-judgmental and non-attached when we pay pure attention.

Judging means applying some kind of logic and moral algorithm to process the input information. No, we don't need that at this stage. That is application specific. When we are learning, all accurate data is good data. We don't filter, eliminate or transform them.  Let our deep learning network within be the 'judge'.

Part of the value of taking a break and going on a vacation is being able to get fresh input data. When on vacation, we enjoy new sights and sensations. The mind has a natural tendency to crave for novelty. This 'craving',  given a positive spin, is simply curiosity. Anything that's familiar and mundane is automatically pushed to the background. When too much of the familiar is repeated, we enter into a state called 'boredom'. 

We take sight-seeing as a kind of recreation, which all humans  enjoy as part of the good life. If we think about it, why should we waste time gawking artificial statues and other kitschy constructions made to pander to tourists who are only interested in taking selfies and boasting about what a good time they are having in social media? 

Do we learn anything from these kind of sight-seeing vacations? You might ask: why do we need to be such a boring spoilsport to insist that anything we do must be 'educational' and 'useful'? Why can't we relax and enjoy doing something that doesn't have any purpose for once? 

I'm all for doing 'useless' activities, as long as one enjoys it. What I probably would suggest is perhaps we could also kill two birds with one stone: dumb activities could also be useful data for the neural network, which we call the mind. 

We can enjoy doing silly things but be mindful at the same time. We can be attentive, even when we 'let go'.  When we are attentive in anything, we always gain insight into things. Insight is like a phase shift in the mind: a new pattern suddenly emerges out or chaos; the cumulative succession of things and events reveal a larger picture, hitherto hidden. Insight is emergent. 

Even the most mundane things we do, have the potential to give us great insight into life and the universe. The mind simply has to be tuned to receive them. Sometimes we call these insights 'inspiration'. 

Mindful attention is a quality of mind that comes with practice. There's a sensitivity and sharpness to one's perception that grow over time. How do we cultivate that?  One becomes attentive by not being goal-oriented at every moment in time. Goals are macroscopic conceptions. When we look at every moment of our experience, there's no such thing as goals, hopes or fears. The moment is as it is. We take it in its totality and move on to the next.

When we do that, we are attentive to the moment and all the sights and sounds that wash over us. Let them nourish the mind. Enjoy your vacation by taking a cosmic selfie every moment of your time. It's called insight-seeing.